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05-16-2010 | Mentoring Program 2010 |
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In a letter from one of our mentors he tells us about Razvan, the 13 years old boy he has been mentoring, and grown to understand and love.
"If someone would have told me, three years ago, that I could care so much for this boy, I would have never believed it. This gypsy boy with so many bad habits? No way. This boy that comes from a family that's a mess, his father, a former boxer, that drinks and watches TV all day, and never works because that would be a dishonor for him. A boy raised in a family where lying, judging other people, being disobedient, deceitful and never having any discipline, are family traits. No way. A boy how's best friends are hooligans and lives in a very poor and rough neighborhood, this boy, to become my friend, I said "No way"
First time I've met Razvan, three years ago, he was coming to the Good News group only to make fun of others. There were many times in which the only solution was to send him home because no one could make him understand that the teachers needed silence and respect. I think respect was not in he's vocabulary or concept.
Little by little I started to learn about Razvan. And the more I learned the more I saw the very insecure, hurting young boy behind the tough facade. The first time I had a face to face talk with him I realized that what he was searching for is someone to listen to him. So I did. He told me how "-everyone was behaving "not fair with him", from he's perspective, everyone only judged him and made jokes. I listened and tried to make him understand that was not the case. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I think there wasn't anything I could have said to help him. He just wanted someone to be listened, he just wanted to have someone's attention, just wanted to see that someone cares about him. Razvan felt that he had two horrible things that marked his life. One; he was poor and two; he was a gipsy. That was enough to make everybody not like him and no one could ever love him. And more than anything he wanted to be loved and to find a person which he could trust to give love back.
Two years ago, a miracle happened. Even though we all saw a big change in him since he made the decision to come to Sunday school; nice prayers and memorized verses were a joy for the teachers, his home roots were still seen very clear in his behavior. Making fun of others, being disobedient, yelling and doing the opposite to what you told him, was just the usual stuff for him. But that summer, the first three days of the camp, his behavior was out of control. He was so bad, that I wondered what happened to him. I talked with him for at least half of hour, and at the end he told me he doesn't believe in God anymore. That broke my heart; I could not believe what he just said. His confession and his bad behavior gave all of the camp leader's reason for concern and we all started to pray for him in particular twice a day. God answered our prayers and made a miracle in his life, that summer he received Christ as his Savior. From that summer on, even if the old habits didn't disappeared at once, you can tell the change in him.
He still lives in the same situation. His father is drunk most of the time and without a job. His mother is working hard to support the family and also his sister and brother took jobs as soon as they could. He lives in the same neighborhood. He still has some of the old habits, but those who had known him for a long time can tell that he's a changed boy. A change that continues to work on his behavior, but for this he needs real help. He is an example for the other children in the Sunday school, but now a very positive one; he is first to answer questions from the Bible and first to pray. He helps others and cares about his friends and teachers. He understands that he has to go to school and that he has to go to work someday, and not follow in his father's footsteps.
Razvan's greatest need is to be loved. He needs to know that someone really cares about him and that he can find someone who wants to know about him, who pays attention and listens to him. But do you know what's great? He is also a good listener. Razvan's greatest quality is that he gives back love. It's hard for him to really trust a person, because most of the people he knows lie and deceive, but when you get his trust, you can say for sure you have a friend.
Razvan's greatest help that he could receive is to have Christian friends. Spending a few hours with a Christian friend makes a huge difference in him after the week he spent in his family and in his neighborhood. He still needs to learn how to deal in the sinful environment from his home and from his neighborhood, how to respond to his parents' requests, who don't know Jesus, and how to react to others who live a life far away from what Christ wants for us.
The latest news about Razvan is that he won the first team medal for Junior Bible Quiz. He learned hard and he made a great impression. This is why I pray that he will find sponsors for the summer camp and maybe some support for him, monthly support that would be used for his food and clothing and school.
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06-24-2009 | Trip to the ZOO |
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Towards the beginning of every month, thanks to your donations, Hope for the Future is able to bring $100 worth of groceries to the Dragomir family. It may not seem like a lot of money but with a small income of $300, give or take, and a small amount of government assistance, it makes a big difference.
For those of you who are not familiar with this family, they are a family of Christians living in a terrible ghetto in one of the worst neighborhoods in Bucharest (read the update from 2006) We were able to move them from their one room apartment into a 3 room house but for a family of 7, they are still struggling. Life is a constant struggle, not one day goes by without worries. When we made our visit in the beginning of May, we were talking with the children about school, what they like to do. We asked the kids if they had ever been to the ZOO and they said No, of course not. Living in America, we take for granted simple things in school like field trips and other things that many poor Romanian children are not privileged to do. So on May 16th, we surprised the kids and picked them up from their house (with permission from mom, of course), we stopped for snacks and headed for the zoo. We saw lions, tigers, pumas, monkeys, snakes, fish, birds and all sorts of animals, that before that day, they had only seen in books. These kids were smiling like I had never seen before. We took them for a nice dinner followed by an Ikea icecream cone. Our fieldtrip brought these kids happiness and comfort and that is what we try to achieve at Hope for the Future. With your help and donations, we are able to do things like this, the kids say thank you!
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11-24-2008 | Another Family Raised Out of Poverty |
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In June of 2006, my brother Chris and I began digging the holes to the pour the foundation of a home for the Diaconu family. It started as a vision, a dream for Toni, to move his wife and children out of their cold and crumbling mud house.
I can tell you from my heart that it takes a lot of strength for a parent to raise a family in a house like that. The old two room house, the stained walls, unfinished cement floors with thin carpet as old as the parents, the bugs, the mice, the roof that is caving in. For most people this is unlivable, yet there they lived. They had no other option.
This past November, I have continued to help Toni. His house is no longer a dream but a two bedroom, house with insulation, tall STABLE ceilings and even running HOT water. As I sat there and saw the faces of these children, how happy and excited they were to have HOT water, I could not believe it.
I was guilty of taking life's simple luxuries for granted. Think about this: have you ever just taken time to thank God for water? For giving you warm water to take a shower, for clean water to drink, for a home insulated from the snow? These are the simple things in life that I know. Many times I have taken them for granted.
At the moment Toni is working hard to finish the new home and movie his family before it snows. I personally worked with him to build this house. We built the roof for a room and insulated it as best as we could with cement and bricks. We installed a water heater and heater to keep the house warm. We installed windows and doors. I also worked to finish some of the walls, sanding it down to become smooth.
We put in the toilet, the sink and the shower and connected everything. We also connected the electricity which proved to be very helpful for working at night. One day, I brought close to one-hundred wheel barrels full of rocks and lined the drive so the kids won't get muddy walking to school in the rain.
Pray for them as the work continues. They should be in their new house in the next couple weeks.
Ben Bracket
Bucharest, Romania
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10-15-2008 | Ben & Lois Brackett Now in Bucharest |
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Ben and Lois Brackett are now living and working with the children and families of Hope for the Future in Bucharest Romania. You can contact them at benbrcktt@aol.com.
If you would like to sponsor them, please email cbrackett@hopeforthefuture.org.
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02-16-2007 | We're Back in the US ! |
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Monica and I and our almost two year old daughter Christalina are back home after nearly one year living in Bucharest, Romania. It has been an amazing, life-changing experience for all of us.
We left our home in Sacramento in February 2006 and followed our calling to help the poor children and families of Romania. Our roll as missionaries has been to oversee and develop the Family Assistance Program and it has been our honor to see it flourish first hand.
Our time was broken up between visits to the 40+ children of the Family Assistance Program, organizing activities for these children, laying the foundation for a mentoring program, construction on two homes and Bible studies out of our apartment.
We were able to move the Dragomir family from a one room apartment in one of Bucharest's worst ghetto to a clean home that had running water. Monica organized a family camp for dozens of children and parents most that had never had this kind of rest from their difficult day to day lives.
Maybe the most memorable 3 weeks of my life was my time in the south of Romania following devastating floods in spring of 2006. I worked in camp for several hundred people who had been left homeless by rising floodwaters. Each day I would walk from the medical clinic I was sleeping in to the camp that had no running water and food that was carefully rationed.
As an American visitor I remember receiving more attention than I thought I should. I remember a man named Costel who invited me into his family's tent and tried to be as hospitable as he could, offering me a bottle of water that he had pumped from a well half a mile away and a seat on a mattress he had salvaged from his home.
I remember the dark eyed gypsy with tears in his eyes telling me how an army soldier woke him up in the middle of the night and told him to take his family to higher ground. They piled what they could onto their horse drawn cart and left their home only to find it the next morning destroyed by the water.
What amazed me the most was that Costel and others in the camp continually told us how much they were encouraged by us. We didn't have any eloquent speeches, money to buy them all homes or any guarantees for their future. They were encouraged because we concerned ourselves with their lives and their situations. Costel told me, You came from America to here, for us. That makes you my brother.
We worked with a local NPO to provide two meals daily and to distribute clothing donations that were shipped in from organizations in Western Europe. We also acted as an advocate for the people to the local authorities who were waste deep in corruption and looking for ways to profit off the situation
We haven't yet decided when we will be returning to Romania but we pray for guidance every night.
My wife Monica and I want to thank our family and friends who provided the $700 we needed monthly to work in Romania. This work is as much yours as it is ours. Thank you.
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08-01-2006 | Dragomir Family: Out of the Ghetto |
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Parents Marian and Mihaela Dragomir have lived in one of Bucharest's worst ghettos for years. The four young children were malnutritioned and suffered from frequent illnesses in their small, one room apartment.
Since fall of last year we have been bringing the family food, vitamins and baby formula every other week. The children were soon much healthier but the apartment building they lived in posed a constant threat to their health and their safety. Crime was rampant and diseases such as hepatitus and teburculosis were present.
For months we looked for a place to move the family. Even a clean and safe one room apartment would have been better, but we were unable to find anything affordable. Every lead we followed went cold.
Finally we found a small house for rent at an extraordinary price. After repairing cracks in the plaster and painting the walls we moved the home in immediately. The home has 3 clean rooms, with outside running water and an outhouse.
The Dragomir family could not have been happier to be in their new home. The kids were so proud to show us around once they moved in two beds and carpet. For the first time, the parents have their own room. The toilet isn't next to the bed and there is clean running water.
We thank everyone for their prayers and their generosity that has truely blessed the Dragomir family.
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07-31-2006 | Family Camp a Success |
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40 Children and 15 adults from the family program had an awesome time in the country side visiting Dracula's Fortress, the largest dam in Romania, and an early 16th century monastery.
It was a great time for the families and children to vacation away from the 2 million residents of Bucharest. For most of the families, it was their first family vacation.
Cristina Paslaru, a widow with 9 children in our Family Assistance Program said, "I felt like I was 20 years old again. Everything was taken care of, the food, the schedule, the children...I haven't relaxed like this in many years."The morning program for the children was done VBS style. The kids did arts and crafts like water color painting, played games and sang songs. Each day ended around a campfire as all the children, parents and volunteers sang, recollected about the day and drank warm Romanian chai tea.
The parents thanked us for the 4 day camp and said it gave them the rest they needed to grow closer in their family. It was a lot of hard work but it was worth it to give these poor families an opportunity to bond and experience the life we often take for granted.
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06-10-2006 | Mentoring Program Scheduled for June |
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We have a dozen volunteers from a local church for our mentoring program that will help children of widows and poor families by providing after school tutoring from positive roll models.
Training for volunteer mentors begins this week. The actual program will begin in September when school begins.
The Romanian public school system is ineffective. Most high school graduates are unprepared to pass college entrance exams and end up entering the unskilled job market.The mentoring program will give children the early boost they need to obtain a university level education later in life. With high unemployment in Romania, higher education often is the difference between a middle class life and poverty.The mentoring program also seeks to develop good character in children at an early age by encouraging mentors to be positive roll models.
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06-05-2006 | Thanks for Supporting Flood Relief |
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A special thanks to everyone who donated cash and clothing for Romanian flood victims. Over $500 of medicine and food was sent to the camp in Chiselet.
The particular camp has been home to about 250 people who's homes were either flooded or destroyed.
The food was sent to supplement the limited supplies a local foundation has been distributing A doctor is stationed at the camp who can prescribe medications but residents are expected to purchase it themselves. The medicine we purchased will go to these children and families who have been given prescriptions.
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